Wednesday, July 26, 2006

I switched servers with Coriel again, this time to Skywall. Skywall is a PST server, so guild raid times are a lot more convenient for me. I've applied to a raiding guild, and today they took me on a run to Blackwing Lair.

Blackwing Lair is pretty neat. We wiped several times on Razorgore, but then killed him. I sat out Vael for one of their guildies, but got back in for the Suppression Room and Broodlord. We then killed Firemaw, and called it a night. I forget what loot dropped, but none of it was useful for paladins.

The fights are pretty interesting. I mostly healed, spamming FoL Ranks 1 or 6. I like the Suppression Room. When I got back in, I wasn't assigned a Greater Blessing, so I got to go nuts with Blessing of Sacrifice and Blessing of Protection (the 3 minute cooldown is really useful while running the gauntlet). Sacrifice really adds up. I almost killed myself a couple times as I had Sacrifices on eight or so targets. After that I tried to be more discriminating. :)

I still think that meleeing-healing is the way to go, though. Honestly, I don't think I ever fell below half mana, and I'm sure I had significant overhealing. And my gear is under-par. Rather than spamming FoL-1, melee-healing with FoL-6 still seems to be a much more efficient use of a paladin. It may be that this raid was geared more than normal, or more experienced, but I don't think the full potential of the paladins is being realized. Nothing in this half of BWL has made me reconsider the notion that paladins should be meleeing.

So far, I really like BWL, and hopefully I will get to see more of it. It's much more interesting and chaotic than Molten Core. I also kind of regret missing the Vael fight, as it's supposed to be quite unique.

Posted by
Rohan

6 comments:

Melee healing is okay for some fights and much, much less okay on others. The Broodlord fight for instance requires alot of FoL spam and he has a short range AoE knockback. Most of the drakes have an AoE effect and the high resist needed for that can kill your mana pool/power. For Nef it's not a bad idea for Nef himself if only for JoW. With Razorgore you want as little agro as possible so being in Melee with anything is bad. Vael is an FR fight and tends to be really, really heal heavy. Given the mana regen of the fight there really isn't a need for Paladins in Melee.

If you are dropping ranks of FoL, it's best not to drop past FoL Rank 4. Your +healing bonus and BoL bonus on Flash of Light is only 100% at Rank 4 FoL and above. And judging from your picure, the gear you have says you probably shouldn't be dropping FoL yet, either :) You want at LEAST +400 healing before you go down a rank.

And in BWL, melee/heal ain't gonna work. The mobs between firemaw and flamegor/ebonroc require healers to be on their game the entire time. Paladins need to be giving heals, not taking them. You DPS is way to ineffcient. Your maximal effectiveness is in healing. That's just the way of the world, son. If you can't get over that, you won't be raiding, and this game probably isn't for you, then.

You are mixing up Flash of Light and Holy Light. Spell ranks gained after level 20 get the full bonus of +heal. This means Holy Light 4 and up, and Flash of Light 1 and up.

Secondly, you can downrank at anytime to reduce overhealing and/or mana consumption. There are numerous mods where you can watch how much overheal you are getting per spell. You can downrank with +0 heal. You don't need +400 or any arbitrary number.

Clearly, I was doing enough overhealing such that downranking was a good idea, else I would have been using FoL-6 exclusively.

Overhealing is situational. In the Broodlord fight, screw overhealing. Huhuran at 30%, overheal like it's going out of style. Vael? Why not.

The only fight I would freak out about mana conservation is Chromie and that's just because it takes far too long. That's a great fight to DPS in though simply because 90% of your spells will be Cleanse and it doesn't reset your swing timer.

I love the suppresion room. I totally go nuts in there. I spam concecration like mad, keep my mana up using SoW and throw flash heals when necessary. I've actually been able to work my way up into the top 10 damage by being aggressive and not dying (poor mages lol).